I’m usually not attacked for being naive on China. But I believe strongly in sending students, with appropriate protections, to China. I was one of these students. I cannot see why our piece should be controversial, but realize there are some who believe all exchanges should be halted. I am not among them. Here is our argument: -Longstanding federal programs that encourage US students to learn about China — like Fulbright, CLS, and Boren — should be funded by the US government. We had similar exchanges with the Soviets, and of course with China, in the past. - Given growing risks to students in China, those participating in these programs must be protected from harassment or threats of arbitrary detention, which are growing, and which are why these programs were difficult to renew in the past. - But there is a way out. Summits provide an opportunity to achieve commitments that protect these programs and their students. Trump should (1) elevate these programs into leader-level deliverables, and (2) reach formal (or, more likely, informal) agreements to insulate them from politics. The former sends a signal not to touch these programs and the latter sustains it. - As part of this effort, Min Zin and other scholars and students arbitrarily detained or exit banned by China must be released. - We did not write this in the piece, but obviously these efforts should be accompanied by proper orientation and training for students before they visit China. That was also the case for these programs in the past. It is more criticism now. We have done all this before. It has worked before too. Leader-level recognition of certain programs in China can provide protection. The US desperately needs China expertise. After a surge among millennials, what expertise we did have faces a cliff as students lose interest in and opportunities for studying China and Chinese. That is a problem.

Scoop: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's proposed AI safety "notification mechanism" is simpler than that moniker suggests: It's an open channel between him and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, four people familiar told me, @PhelimKine and @_AriHawkins. politico.com/news/2026/09/22…

There's been a lot written on the fact Chen Yixin, China's Minister of State Security, published a signed article on AI risks Sunday. It is an important piece. What stood out to me was how much in this piece has been said before by Xi or by the MSS itself. (1) The opener to the piece, including the title and much of the initial eight-point frame, seems to be heavily drawn from Xi's April 2025 Politburo study session on AI. (2) Many of the six risks in Chen Yixin's piece are ones the MSS has been posting about on WeChat since 2023. Why does this matter? The West is in the midst of a full-blown debate about AI risks and regulation, and a lot of people are reading Chen's piece as part of that. But I think it better reflects deeper thinking that has been going on for some time in the Party. The piece marks a further formalization of that thinking.

The Chinese government has now clearly and unmistakably rejected serious collaboration with the United States on AI safety. This was a predictable development. It is also a clarifying moment for the importance of U.S. export controls on AI chips and other technologies, which are now indisputably a necessary element of any AI safety regulatory regime—and must be an urgent policy priority. The Chinese government is now explicitly saying it views any U.S. proposal that would constrain its AI capabilities as an effort to lock-in U.S. technological dominance over China—which is unsurprising because that is the exact same way it has historically viewed U.S. arms control proposals. And particularly given President Trump has stated that staying ahead of China in AI is basically an existential issue for the United States, it is understandable that China would have little willingness to put any constraints on its own AI labs so long as it feels like they still have a chance to overtake the U.S. AI labs. China is unlikely to change this posture unless it perceives it cannot catch up to the United States in AI, or there is a catastrophic event that shocks the Chinese government into changing its perspective (à la the Cuban Missile Crisis). If China will not agree to any negotiated restraints on its AI labs, this leaves the United States with two options if it wishes to stay ahead of China in AI: (1) slow China’s AI development ourselves by strengthening export controls on U.S. AI chips and other relevant technologies, which China needs to stay competitive with the United States in AI; or (2) race ahead of China as fast as possible by refusing U.S. labs’ requests to impose regulations that slow their development of AI to ensure it is safe, and hope that the labs’ warnings about the potential for catastrophic risk if AI development moves too fast are wrong. Those are the only two options. There is no longer any middle ground. As long as China is a pacing threat, the United States will be limited in its ability to impose meaningful AI safety regulations on its own AI labs given maintaining AI leadership is existential. This means it is no longer an intellectually consistent position to support AI safety regulations but oppose export controls on China. If you oppose export controls, you either oppose AI safety regulations, or believe the Chinese government is lying when it says it rejects U.S. proposals to slow AI development. And China has no incentive to lie about that. This is a dangerous situation. If you do believe that AI leadership is existential and that domestic AI safety regulations are necessary and urgent, the time for half-measures on export controls is over. China has shown us its cards and told us it will not cooperate on AI safety. If China will not slow itself down in the near-term, we have no choice but to take steps today to slow China down ourselves. Not doing so is irresponsible.

We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so. Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our systems, so that they can verify adherence to our safety measures, report on incidents, and assess models’ alignment during training. You can read the full post here: darioamodei.com/post/we-must…

New from us: Anthropic just published scenarios for AI’s possible economic impacts, which range from minimal, to explosive GDP growth of 15% by 2030 as knowledge-worker unemployment hits 18%. I sat down with their co-founder Jack Clark to pick his brains on how they’re thinking about all of this.